Hands On With the Wexler FlexOne eReader (video)

Wexler, a Russian ereader maker, was the first company to release an ereader which used the flexible 6" E-ink screen made by LG Display. It's been out in Russia for a few weeks now, but since Wexler won't ship to the US this device hasn't managed to cross the ocean.Until now.

I got my hands on it for a few minutes yesterday, and the head of marketing at E-ink also helped Ron Mertens shoot a brief video (end of the post). I'm still trying to talk my way into buying it from E-ink (wish me luck). Just so you know, this is the screen that I was disappointed not to find in the LG booth, and I was a little surprised to see it in the E-ink booth.

The FlexOne looks just like the unit shown in the abuse video I posted a few weeks back. It is indeed that flexible:

Naturally I didn't dare put any real effort into killing it; it wasn't mine after all (and I'm still trying to get it).

I also put a few minutes into trying out the features. It's a pretty basic device with no touchscreen, Wifi, or anything you wouldn't expect to find on a cheap ereader. About its only remarkable feature is the flexible 6" screen. I'm hoping to see it on the next Kindle or nook, aren't you?

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Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."

As a side note, Kindles are more accurately called Swindles, because they locked the readers into the Amazon store, being at their mercy for what they can read. As if a certain book becomes banned in an area, Amazon is “forced” to remove that book from all the devices and from being available in that area. There have been reports of this even happening while someone was reading a book.

Yes, you can side load books. But 90% of those that buy these are people that don’t know how, and don’t know about these lockdowns of Amazon’s. So they give away their freedom without a fight at all. And then fall in love with the conveniences.

I don’t know what side-loading is but you can just transfer the file onto the ereader as you do with an external hard drive or USB stick.. and it recognises it. You aren’t locked into it any more than you’re locked into using applications from the App Store on a Mac – as in, you’re not.